Foraging for Bow: Cherries and Service Berries

Admittedly, our cherry crop was very small this year. We used to get bowls and bowls full of cherries. This year, only two. Not bowls --  cherries, one of which I gave to Bow.

Bow ate the cherry very slowly.

When he was done with it, he gave me the pit back, even though I did not have another cherry to give him. This is what the cherry looked like when it was still on the tree.

It had rained that morning, so the cherry was wet, a drop of rain was still hanging off of it.

The yucca plant was also dripping with rainwater when I went to look at it by day.

I noticed that there were many insects gathered on the flowering yucca plant, even the black garden ants that used to work on the peony before it bloomed.

It is good to have alternate sources of food and not just depend on a single plant to feed you. That's why I am still pondering what is going on with the Monarch butterfly. Whatever possessed it to become dependent on a single kind of plant -- milkweed -- and if it needs the milkweed to survive, why does it not help with its propagation?

Every day I check to see what insects are pollinating the milkweed. I see Great Spangled Fritillary Butterflies and I see Skipper butterflies.

A Skipper and a friend on the Purple Milkweed

I see honey bees and Great Spangled Fritiallary Butterlies trading places on the purple milkweed blossoms.

But I see no Monarch  butterflies helping out. And yet this plant is so important to their very existence! What is up with that? It's like the Irish during the potato blight. Who depends on a single type of crop for his very existence?

Not Bow and me. We know that if the cherry crop is bad, the service berries that planted themselves on our land might actually be more plentiful and equally nutritious.

I picked some this morning and gave Bow to sample. (We don't have a Hebrew word for service berry yet. I suppose I will have to invent one.)

Bow liked the service berries just fine, but they are small.

However, down by the orchard, against the fence line, there is a service berry tree whose berries are still green and measure as large as cherries. I know not to count my chickens before they hatch, but that may turn out to be a very good deal, considering that I never planted them, watered them or did anything to help them grow! Bow and I are as sinfully idle as the Monarch, but a little more opportunistic in our eating habits.

Interdependence, Independence and Temporary Mutualism

The peony has finally bloomed. Yesterday, by the end of the day, it looked like this:

The black garden ants are no longer attracted to the flower and have moved on. I wrote a retrospective about the whole process, and you can read it here:

http://www.pubwages.com/45/how-the-peony-blooms-with-help-from-black-garden-ants

When I first noticed the black garden ants patrolling the peony flower head, I had not idea what they were doing there. My friend Susan had to point out to me that they were helping the flower to open and were enjoying its juices all the while. This is an example of mutualism. It is also an example of how temporary mutual benefit should work. I find this highly instructive, in view of other insect models we have been cited as something to pattern our lives on.

People take all sorts of examples from nature, and depending on their preferences, try to apply them to mankind. For instance, in another blog I am following, on Mother's Day there was a piece on self-sacrifice using a spider as an example:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/05/mother-eating-spiders.html

Yes, there are spiders who offer up their own bodies as nourishment for the young. Some people see this as a heartwarming example of altruism, but personally, I find it a little grotesque. Altruism of this kind is not attractive to me. On the other hand, I  like the temporary mutualism of the black garden ants and the peony. I especially appreciate how there are no hard feelings once the mutual benefit is over. The ants just move on. There are no recriminations: "You used us when you needed us, but now that you don't need us, you're sending us away empty-handed! We feel exploited!"

Instead, perceiving that there is no longer a benefit here for them, the ants move on. The ants have other sources of food. The peony is just one of them. They do not actually need the peony, nor does the peony in truth need them, but both sides benefited immensely from the relationship while it lasted, and all is good.

I think that  ideally employment should be like that. People sometimes want extra money and benefit immensely from having a job. Other people sometimes need help getting a task accomplished, and they benefit from having people work for them. So long as both sides are happy, they should stay in the relationship. But employees should not regard the employer as their only source of sustenance, and employers should not think that they get to have people work for them forever. As soon as there is no longer mutual benefit in the relationship, each party should be able to move on.

The problem is not just that sometimes people think they should have a job, because they "need a job", which is a euphemism for saying that they want money and does not take into account the rights of employers to discontinue a position. The problem is also that employers sometimes think they "need" employees and try to make sure that employees do not have other ways of life available to them.

I think the whole business of penalizing people for living off-grid is an attempt to make sure everybody will always need to be employed in order to pay the bills. That is just as bad as employees thinking they are entitled to a job. "Slavery is a leash with a noose at both ends." Recognize the quote?

Forced dependence of anyone on anyone else is a nasty thing. The essence of the concentration camp is actually such a forced dependence. It goes beyond slavery, to something even worse: uselessness.

http://theodosiaandthepirates.blogspot.com/2015/05/lord-kitchener-inventor-of.html

The maternal relationship is sometimes seen as the model for all other relationships, but people forget how temporary that relationship actually is. Dependence by young on a mother is designed to last only long enough to bootstrap the new entity while it acquires the skills it needs to make its way in life.

Which brings me to the kitten. I am a little worried about the kitten, because I have noticed that when I put the food dish down on the floor, the kitten does not immediately know where it is. It goes all around the dish in circles, until it finally finds where the food is and sets about eating hungrily.  I hope this just means the kitten is inattentive, not blind. It will need to be much more efficient at locating food if it is to become an independent hunter.

If the kitten is not able to learn how to hunt, then it cannot live on its own. In that case, it will have to become owned or die. The case of individuals who can't provide for themselves and will always need help is a special one. To the extent that they are dependent, then they also cannot be free. Sometimes that cannot be helped, But we should not foster universal dependence of all people on all other people.

So what about Bow? There is no question that Bow is not independent right now. He is still an adolescent, so it's not that big a problem, but there is no reason to think that he will ever be independent, The important thing for Bow is to be with someone who finds him useful, so that paying for his keep will not get discontinued.  Unlike other researchers, I do not consider the project over and done with, and I will not stop supporting Bow, no matter what.  But for all the exotics who are currently being confiscated from owners who love them and therefore have a use for them, and are being shut up in government run facilities, the situation is much worse. Even in the so-called private sanctuaries, you have to wonder what will happen when their public funding runs out.

Not every concentration camp is intended to be an extermination camp. Sometimes people really do intend to treat others humanely, only it does not work out this way. I am currently researching what happened in an internment camp run by the Japanese in China during World War II. The Japanese did not intend to starve their prisoners, but as they started losing the war, they could not afford to give them much food. It's not the intentions that count. It's the results.

Here's what I'm really getting at: animal rights activists say that ownership of animals is evil because they liken it to slavery. While I will admit that slavery can be a very ugly thing, it is not the worst thing that can happen to someone. The worst thing is to be thrown into a sanctuary or a camp or a centralized facility where no one can find out what is really happening to you. That is my worst fear, not just for me and other humans I care about, but also for Bow.